The present invention relates to egg handling apparatus and particularly to an egg collecting and transferring system.
In modern automated poultry systems, hens are housed in tiers of cages with egg collecting and conveying belts extending along the front of the cages for automatically transporting eggs from each of the cages to a central processing area. Since the cages are arranged in vertically-spaced inclined tiers, the egg collecting belts similarly are vertically and horizontally displaced, thus making it necessary to provide a collecting mechanism for receiving eggs at horizontally-spaced different vertical levels. The collecting mechanism then transports the eggs to an accumulating or main conveyor extending across the ends of each row of cages such that all of the eggs from the installation can be transported to a centralized processing and packaging area.
There have been several methods proposed for such a collection and transferring process, the most common of which is to provide a generally vertically movable egg receiving assembly which receives eggs at different vertical levels and lowers them to a main conveyor positioned below the level of the input egg belt conveyors. The difficulty with such a system lies in the fact that the main conveyor must be positioned below the lowermost input egg belt conveyor thereby putting severe restrictions on the overall system installation.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,166,175, issued Jan. 19, 1965, to J. S. Kurtz, et al. and assigned to the present Assignee discloses an egg collecting and conveying system by which an elevator is employed which receives eggs on one side, carries them up and over the top of an endless loop egg holding mechanism and transfers the eggs from one set of fingers on the input side of the conveyor to another set of adjacent fingers as the eggs are carried over the top of the elevator. This system permits the discharge of the eggs to a main conveyor which is positioned on the opposite side of the elevator at any convenient height.
Other egg elevating systems have been proposed by which generally curved fingers are attached to a single wide belt and receive eggs on an input side of an elevator and transfers the eggs to an opposite facing leg as the eggs move over the top of the elevator. U.S. Pat. No. 4,299,051 issued Apr. 22, 1980, entitled EGG TRANSPORTING and assigned to the present Assignee, represents an improved egg elevator design of this general type. Nonetheless, the eggs are collectively transported from each egg belt conveyor directly onto the elevator which must move rapidly to keep up with the incoming flow of eggs received in random orientation and in groups. As a result, significant egg breakage at the interface between the egg belt conveyors and the egg elevator still occurs. A transfer mechanism comprising rotating star wheels for carrying eggs between wire mesh trays communicating with the egg belt conveyors and the elevators has been employed, but the use of mesh trays slows the flow rate of eggs through the system. Also, in conventional elevators, since the egg handling cradles are secured to a single belt, adjustments, modifications, or repairs to the elevator are difficult and little or no flexibility to accommodate for each egg belt conveyor is possible.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved egg handling system which provides a flexible system which can be adapted for installations with different numbers of infeed egg conveying belts and different levels of output main conveyors and provides high speed operation with a minimum of breakage.